I have an unrooted Nexus S and recently the power button stopped working - the
only way to turn my screen on was to plug in a USB cable, the only way to turn
it off to wait for the timeout to kick-in.

Apparently this is a common problem with the Nexus S range of mobiles - some
people even going so far as to say it is deliberate sabotage (though it's more
likeky just about cost cutting and companies caring about making products that
last past their warranty period), but despite being such a frequent problem
finding a solution was far more difficult than it should have been, so I'm
writing this in the hope it helps other avoid wasting the time I did.

Searching for how to solve this by remapping another button to act as the on/off
button, everywhere was talking about root access - or simply assuming it that it
was done - and providing solutions that depend on it. I already have enough
things to worry about without adding rooting my mobile device to that list.

The good news is, you do not need to root your device to get around this problem.

I found two applications that together allow me to turn the screen on and off
(without plugging in the cable).

The first is Wake All,
a 20k app that allows any physical button to wake up the device - for the Nexus S
that means using the volume buttons to turn on the screen.

The second is Screen Off and Lock,
a 492k app that has various sound/animation options I don't care about, but
those can all be left alone and it can be added as a shortcut to press and turn
the screen off.

These both work on Android 4.1.2 without needing a rooted device, though there
is one oddity that I have noticed: after turning the device on, the slide to
unlock screen works as usual, but after this the screen is unresponsive - I need
to press the home button to fully wake up the device. I don't know if this
is a bug with either application or with Android, but - now that I've figured
this out - it's not a big deal.

Hello. So this is one of those awkward posts, where I'm talking to you without
having any idea of who you are or why you're here, nor indeed do I know if you
know why you're here and who I am.

Well you can figure out that last bit yourself, if you're interested, and as for
the rest, the waffle which follows intends to be addressing the why, because the
point of this post is to give a brief history of this blog along with indicating
my intentions for the future and beyond.

In the smartphone industry alone ... as much as $20 billion was spent on
patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years ? an amount equal
to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple
and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases
exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to
public filings.

Here's an interesting TED talk by Malte Spitz on what kind of
data phone companies are collecting.

Malte Spitz wasn't too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share
information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later,
Spitz received 35,830 lines of code — a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute
account of half a year of his life.